


Honey you're familiar like my mirror (years ago)

by ImberReader



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne features prominently but is not actually present, F/M, He's just a lovesick fool with little hope and too much time to think about it, Jaime might have more self-awareness than a potato in this fic, There is no plot just a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-20 17:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberReader/pseuds/ImberReader
Summary: On his way to Winterfell, Jaime has too much time to think. About honor lost and rediscovered through the woman for whom he rides North.





	Honey you're familiar like my mirror (years ago)

**Author's Note:**

> I am merely 300 Braime fics in a trenchcoat and I have not read the books or watched the show beyond Braime clips, so I promise no guarantee this is in-character. 
> 
> I wrote it in one stream of my consciousness venting out emotions, upon a friend's prompt and there is no plot or reason to this, beyond said prompt. I joined the fandom late, so I haven't read any fics about his travel North and I'm just filling that void for myself.
> 
> It does technically take part in an Universe where season 8 goes down rather differently. 
> 
> Title from Hozier's From Eden, which was the prompt itself.
> 
> Not beta-d. We embarrass ourselves publicly like men. You can find me on [tumblr](https://scoundrels-in-love.tumblr.com/).

He is not sure when it started. 

Unaware of it, he had walked on, but nonetheless it has guided his hand (hands, for the brief overlapping moment when the unrealized shift had happened and when he still had two). 

Perhaps it began when he stopped hating her. But then, Jaime thinks, as he turns to face the small fire in fruitless attempt to pretend there is warmth to be found tonight, did he ever hate Brienne in the first place?

Maybe those very few days he did loathe her entirely, her ungainly body clad in armor as she played at being knight. When she was just an extension of Catelyn Stark’s hatred and symbol of his captivity, already a year that had stretched like a lifetime and promising to be no shorter ahead. 

But Brienne was too much _herself_ and his opinion had begun to shift gradually, somewhere between the times she made sure he’d be no more soaked by cold rain or hungry than she was when hunting went poorly. Between the moment they had stepped on land and she said her loyalty wasn’t to any Stark, just Lady Catelyn, and the stunned silence that reigned after her sword had delivered swift, hard earned justice. 

She had been beautiful, a different kind of beautiful then, that didn’t disguise her features twisted in anger in disgust. The beauty of a warrior, a _knight_, fulfilling his oath to protect, to be just. One made for stained glass windows telling legends, imperfect in their proportions and limited in features they depicted, but breathtaking when light streamed through. A reminder. The sort he had stopped looking at, if only so he wouldn’t have to think of how he had fallen short, how it did not exist anymore in this world.

Jaime could not look away from her as they journeyed on. 

He falls asleep with that thought, in deep, dreamless sleep, green eyes haunting him only briefly before he wakes.

When he resumes his journey toward Winterfell after brief meal, his thoughts return to Brienne. It is not that it matters when the ground began shifting beneath his feet, pebble by pebble, but the day is long and he needs something to occupy his thoughts. Why not her, when she’s the cause of it all? 

(No, he decides after brief contemplation, it is not her that sent tremors through the earth and left him stumbling. She was a rock that withstood it instead, sturdy and unshakable in a way he had thought impossible. Had let him hold onto her, without even noticing like cliff doesn’t notice moss, when he was sinking in wet, insatiable sand.)

It must have happened somewhere before they were captured, he thinks. He is an Oathbreaker and man without honor, he had stood by and listened to his Queen crying out for help, and yet it suddenly mattered more than anything that he stops Locke's men. 

_In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the innocent._

Perhaps, he muses, he found his long lost faith in those words when they were fighting on the bridge, his opponent the one person more honorable than all other knights he knows put together yet without title of one.

(If the Dragon Queen permits him one last request before he is turned into ash, could he knight her? Would it disgrace her further, if her knighthood came from his hand? Would she even accept it, then? Or would she kneel and maybe even smile at him rising, a Knight in every sense of the word?)

The thought of the judgement awaiting him shifts the tide of his thoughts. The further he goes, the more he realizes how there is no road ahead him nor one to lead him back to King’s Landing, though he would not take it even if there was. 

Neither the Targaryen nor the Stark are likely to turn blind eye to his sins, perhaps he will be killed on sight. Without ever having the chance to tell her that he came, that he came because she said Fuck loyalty, because her eyes are storm at sea that drag him to unfamiliar shores, because her honor gleams brighter than the golden hilt of Oathkeeper. 

There have not been many acts of defiance in his life, except for one that has dragged his name through mud for decades. Or rather, that is the only one he has done without someone asking him to. Defying father and remaining in Kingsguard had been selfish act, but also one expected from him by Cersei. She cared not for oaths he kept or broke, but he had always fulfilled the ones given to her.

Now he has defied _her_, too. Because Brienne had asked. Ah, but had she? She merely wanted him to speak to the Queen, change her mind. Brienne had not demanded him to give his hand for her, she had not asked for suit of armor and a sword. She had asked nothing of him, until Riverrun. And even then it had not been for _her_. 

There is honor in you, she had said, and he could almost believe it. As if she had seen the five-and-ten year old him, donning white cloak and thinking the vows he swore would always guide his hand. As if she had somehow captured a glimpse of that boy and shown him reflecting in the clear blue of her eyes, like a mirror -- No. He would not compare her to his reflection. There was only one who was. Or rather, he had been the one trying to be Cersei’s reflection and always found to be short of her ruthless perfection. 

(Blue, he thinks, is a color that suits _honor_ the best. Not gold that changes hands so easily, not red of blood and his House, not even white that mars so easily and carries no weight, same as snowflakes softly falling upon him now.)

If he is not put to death by dragon fire, will she accept him as she had accepted his truths, his share of oath and his gifts so she could fulfill it? Will she even look upon him again after how they parted at Dragonpit? But he _had_ done what he could, even if it meant riding alone to face certain death. Who was playing at being knight now, if not he with his one hand and reborn wish to fulfill his vows?

Maybe she will even be so kind as to let him die in the arms of the woman he loves. Because that, too, had happened somewhere along the way. Jaime doesn’t think there had been a single moment in which his heart stopped pumping the poison Cersei put in him (it hadn’t still, he thought, but he now saw it for what it was) and filled instead with feelings for Brienne. It must have been gradual, her stubborn presence and light pressing through his defenses, unstoppable like the sunrise.

Which, he muses, can be cast away by Night King, so perhaps he should find something even more unpreventable to compare her to. But Jaime cannot think of anything, there is only her. 

He wishes he could tell her that, take her calloused hand and press kisses to it, tell her it holds all of him, as unworthy as it is. But if he is to die, and Jaime doesn’t see much else happening, it would be little more than another burden on her. She would feel guilty then, as if his feelings made _her_ responsible for him. And as wide as her shoulders are, there is so much on them already. 

(The thought of her stumbling through rejecting him with all tact and honor she can muster stings, but he wouldn’t blame her - there is no one that would look at him, graying and maimed, and see husband material.)

No, he will take his love to his grave and that will be the only good thing he has ever done with his foolish heart’s affections. 

And yet, when he falls asleep that night, it’s with the picture of her smiling down at him, alive and glowing in the bleak light of Winterfell courtyard. It warms him like nothing else, even if the truth of it never happening fills his chest with thick blood. She is, it seems, meant to drown him, after all.


End file.
